Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- David Roberts sets out the big picture surrounding the Green New Deal, as essentially nobody other than the activists supporting it has made any effort to deal with the reality of impending climate breakdown:

(T)hat’s the context here: a world tipping over into catastrophe, a political system under siege by reactionary plutocrats, a rare wave of well-organized grassroots enthusiasm, and a guiding document that does nothing but articulate goals that any climate-informed progressive ought to share.

Given all that, for those who acknowledge the importance of decarbonizing the economy and recognize how cosmically difficult it is going to be, maybe nitpicking and scolding isn’t the way to go. Maybe the moment calls for a constructive and additive spirit.

The GND remains a statement of aspirations. All the concrete work of policymaking lies ahead. There will be room for carbon prices and R&D spending and performance standards and housing density and all the rest of the vast menu of options for reducing emissions. None of those policy debates have been preempted or silenced. 

And yes, there are any number of ways it could go off the rails, politically or substantively. Everyone is free, nay, encouraged to use their critical judgment. 

But the circumstances we find ourselves in are extraordinary and desperate. Above all, they call upon all of us to put aside our egos and our personal brands and strive for solidarity, to build the biggest and most powerful social force possible behind the only kind of rapid transition that can hope to inspire other countries and forestall the worst of climate change.

- Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon highlights why the UK needs to stop subsidizing the extraction and burning of fossil fuels in developing countries.

- Adam Johnson calls out the lack of any scrutiny of an obvious scheme by the same people who have pushed wars and humanitarian atrocities on the U.S.' behalf for three decades to continue that pattern in Venezuela. And Kevin Tillman argues against yet another illegal U.S. invasion.

- Steve May comments on the willingness of Andrew Scheer and the Cons to join forces with avowed racists. labour

- Finally, Derek Thompson writes about the obsession with "workism" that pushes workers to accept perpetually deteriorating job conditions and lives based on the social expectation they'll see work as its own reward.